“The tail wagging the dog” is a popular metaphor put forward by Prof. Anthony Green, an expert in the field of language assessment in the UK, to show the immense power of testing.
The authoritative power of standardised tests has been realised all over the world. These tests help identifying problem areas in individual students, schools and curricula and guide the teachers and students by providing a structure of what needs to be taught and learnt at implementing level. Tests also help the people at policy level to devise innovations to address the issues in the field of teaching and learning. The power of tests has become an inevitable force in poor countries, where resources are limited and competitions for a few places available are high. Sri Lanka, where the intense competition for limited opportunities for university admissions and for decent jobs is high, is not an exception.
Tests have become high-stakes, especially GCE (O/L) and GCE (A/L) where important decisions are made on the results at these high-stakes. Employment opportunities, higher studies, university entrance and many more are decided on these results. No one can underestimate the high-stakes of the Grade 5 scholarship. A needy child’s dream of getting a leading school depends on the outcome of the scholarship exam.
Since the performance at these high-stakes has serious repercussions on test takers’ future, the researchers in the field of language testing, who study the impact of testing on teaching, learning and material designing, have noted a phenomenon called ‘washback’ or ‘washforward’. The effect of testing is typically seen as either positive or negative. When the outcomes of the testing are intended in the curriculum and aligning with the accomplishment of educational goals, it is positive and referred to as washforward.
Washback occurs in situations where there may be a mismatch between the intended learning outcomes in the curriculum and the focus of testing. As a result, the curriculum goals may be abandoned in favour of test preparation.
Test score pollution is an effect of testing as a result of insubstantial design of a test. In this case, test scores don’t reflect the potential of a learner because of over-interpretation of the meaning of test scores, maybe, because of rote learning and memorising model answers for test items.
Narrowing curriculum is another negative phenomenon of testing. As a result, only areas to be tested are focused in the classroom teaching and learning activities. The learners as well as the teachers often ignore areas which have been tested in the recent past presuming that those areas have less chance to reappear at the forthcoming tests.
When the design of tests does not challenge learners to put their skills in practice as expected in the curriculum, they focus only on what is to be tested. As a result, the test effect leads them to only shallow learning.
These unintended outcomes are the washback effects of testing English language which lead to the learners’ poor standard of English in Sri Lanka, even after more than ten years of formal education and in most cases informal education (tuition) as well.
Speaking and listening had never been a focus by teachers, students and officials. Even those students, who gain good scores at the GCE (O/L) and GCE (A/L) in the English language, are nowhere near the expected standard of English, especially in terms of their speaking abilities.
One of the main reasons, maybe, due to the non-assessment of these skills and along with other factors, contributes to the poor speaking ability of school students, even though speaking skills are included in the curriculum for the English language. The lack of speaking ability will support the argument of negative effects of testing. That is, only the items and skills, which are tested, will be focused more in the classroom.
Moreover, in Sri Lanka, we have been setting policies to address issues in teaching and learning English at schools, especially in the Government sector where students’ performances are disappointing, particularly their speaking ability.
In the mid-1980s, it was decided to assess speaking, and subsequently, it was dropped due to various reasons. In 2009, an initiative, by the Presidential Task Force on English and IT under the guidance of Sunimal Fernando (Advisor to the President and Coordinator / English) under former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, called, ‘English as a Life Skill Program (ELSP)’, was launched as part of Mahinda Chinthana. The main aim of the program was to test speaking skills at school as well as at national level.
It shows that the policy makers are in a dilemma. Testing, on one hand, leads the system of education to negative effects, on the other hand, the policy makers, teachers and officials have been using testing as an easy and low cost measure to implement an innovation and change to the system of education.
The research findings of Umashankar, S (2017) (the writer of this article) can help solve the issues of testing on teaching and learning activities.
Under the ELSP, it was decided to test speaking along with reading, writing and listening. Since the decision of testing speaking was made, it was found that teachers, students and other intermediate level officials, including Principals, In-service Advisors, and Directors of Education focused more on speaking skills than before. It was a clear indication of testing effect. However, the focus had soon faded away with the indefinite postponement of testing speaking, especially at the national level by the policy makers for reasons only known to them.
The research findings imply that there should be a test which should be designed to cover all the important elements so that teachers and students would put more effort to develop those skills. The monitoring of implementations would help the policy makers.
We should also be aware of the negative impacts of tests and other factors that prevent the curriculum objectives and hence design a test in a comprehensive manner incorporating all the skills to be developed as expected in the curriculum.
In the case of English language testing, equal weighting should be given to varied skills – speaking, listening, reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar. I would insist that speaking is given a little more weight than others.
I would suggest teaching only listening and speaking skills for students from Grade 1–3 and later reading and writing to follow, thus giving enough practice in listening and speaking at the earliest. I can call upon the fact that how we learnt our own mother tongue to support my argument. We first we listen to a word more than several times, and then slowly utter it. Only after mastering the speaking skills, we started writing and reading.
It is now high time for the stakeholders to implement Mahinda Chinthana with full force rather than lamenting about the standard of English in our country.
The writer is a senior lecturer in English, Eastern University.